


Cry! Cry! Cry!

by ddespair



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5768995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddespair/pseuds/ddespair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon divergent AU where Freddy doesn't get to confess. Non-linear. Larry/Holdaway POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cry! Cry! Cry!

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a while back and never did anything with it, figured I'd clean it up a little and post it even though I don't know how I feel about it because... yolo.
> 
> I get really inspired by other writers' "Holdaway is a great bro" fics and wanted to do my own, I guess. He's really hard for me to get down; I hope I didn't screw it up too much.

The best laid plans…

Of course he’d taken every precaution as far as the setup went. Of course. But he also couldn’t control Cabot’s choice for the rendezvous location. A couple sets of windows, half obstructed by shrubbery and coated with some sort of foggy shit on top of that.

_“I get all the fucking danger of having you guys in my back pocket, but none of the safety.”_

Freddy had had qualms. Freddy had spoken of the other thieves familiarly, with a certain air of chumminess, even, as his written reports became uncharacteristically sparse.

He should’ve pulled him out.

\--

It wasn’t protocol or his job, but Holdaway felt a responsibility to conduct the interviews himself. Responsibility, but also dread.

The first of the only two thieves left alive made it easy on him with a sullen, “Man, I ain’t talkin’ to you till my lawyer gets here.” Fine. Defense lawyers, scum of the earth though they were, were at least familiar.

The other guy, Dimick, Holdaway had put off. They’d both spend enough time in the hospital before this for the lab work to come back, statements and reports taken from the units on scene. Holdaway knew this guy had killed two cops, and his rap sheet suggested another cop killing up north that he was never pinned for. Holdaway also knew the guys who showed at the warehouse found Dimick with Freddy in his arms, and the slugs in both Cabots had come from the gun in his hand.

“Where’s the kid?” Larry demanded the moment the detective entered the room. His eyes had the wild look of an injured animal that chose “fight” out of “fight or flight” when cornered.

The question hit Holdaway like a slap in the face, but he ignored it. “Look, I know this isn’t your first rodeo, so I’m not gonna play any games.” Half true, and half out of consideration for taking a bullet for his colleague. Mentee. Friend.

“Where is he?”

\--

Retrograde amnesia was a common side effect of the anesthesia, the doctors had explained to Larry.

The first hour he regained consciousness, he recalled the telegram from Joe. Bits and bobs floated at him after that, out of chronological order, like trying to piece together a drunken evening the morning after. Brown babbling in a diner. Joe issuing out guns, matching stainless 9mms. Nice Guy guffawing during a car ride. Himself, kicking Pink in the ribs. A sickening mix of gas fumes and the metallic scent of blood. Guys joking, guys arguing, guys yelling and shooting. Like a funnel drawing to a point, his surfacing memories seemed to be converging around a central subject. Orange screaming, the white interior of a car smeared with bright red. Orange leaning in for a light from Larry’s Zippo. Orange’s wry smile hovering over a bottle of beer. Orange’s lips against Larry’s. Orange’s hand, slick with blood, gripped tight in his.

Larry hated the constant presence of the police guard while recalled these events. Felt like an invasion of something private, intimate, though they had no way of knowing what was going on inside his drug-fogged head. He’d thrown his fork down with a noisy clatter one day when the smell of his meatloaf brought out a vignette of Orange dropping the contents of a hamburger into his lap. The cop watching him at the time had asked, “You ok?” and in that moment, almost nothing would’ve made Larry happier than driving that fork straight through the guy’s eye socket.

Nothing, that is, but the warm solid sensation of pale skin against his own, the scent of leather and tobacco and salty skin musk.

\--

And still, Larry couldn’t remember what came after the screaming and bleeding. It enraged him to think that this cop was his key, but he had no other choice. He had to know.

“You overdid it, Dimick. This was never about no diamond heist. We was after Cabot, was gonna give you other sad sacks sweet deals. But ballistics found out you went and left bullets from your own gun in those cops at Highland Park. No way in hell the DA’s gonna let that slide, even if you did take out Big Man and Nice Guy. So here’s the d-”

“Where!?” Holdaway could see why it’d been deemed necessary to cuff Larry to the chair. He didn’t seem to notice the angry red marks on his wrists.

“Listen, man! Listen to me. Take the plea. It’ll be life but DA won’t push for death penalty and you MIGHT have a shot at parole. You don’t want to sit through that trial!”

“Fuck you!” Dimick spat, and promptly shut up like a clam. Holdaway sighed and rubbed his temples, avoiding eye contact. Only the sound of Dimick’s strained breathing filled the room.

Tense seconds ticked by until Holdaway shifted forward and met the thief’s angry gaze- beyond angry, livid. Panicked and enraged. He cast a glance at the two-way mirror before finally responding to Dimick’s earlier question. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this, but you’ll find out sooner or later. He didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

\--

_“He didn’t make it.”_

A tight pain squeezed the air from Larry’s lungs and he could remember feeling like this before. Suddenly, he could remember.

“Larry, stop pointing that fucking gun at my dad!” Bang. Bang. Bang.

The physical pain of the gunshot paled in comparison to the wild panic of knowing Cabot had shot the boy. His boy.

With great effort, Larry managed to cradle his head. Joe’s bullet hit him in the throat, his face painted in red. No sound would come from him anymore, but as Larry met those green eyes he saw Orange’s mouth form his name.

He couldn’t tell if it was Orange’s heartbeat or the pulsating pain throbbing through his own body that he was feeling. But there could still be a chance.

\--

“You’re _sorry_!? Don’t you fucking-” he cut off abruptly and looked away.

The level of distress, the trace of wetness on Dimick’s face, the reports’ descriptions of him with Freddy… what Holdaway saw in Dimick reflected how he’d felt at first, too, but this man had known Freddy for a few weeks to Holdaway’s several years. How could he be this torn up over someone whose name he didn’t even know?

“I loved him, too,” he wanted to explain, but instead said, “Look, man. You can believe me or not. I’m telling you for your own good- this isn’t any of that ‘good cop’ bullshit, either. You wanna avoid sitting around in county, and you definitely want to avoid the trial. Take the plea. That’s it.” With that, the cop collected his file, switched off his recorder, and got up from his seat.

Before exiting, he hesitated and turned back towards Dimick. “What exactly was your relationship? Off the record. No interrogation, just me, as a person, asking you, as a person, a question.”

Dimick met his gaze for a moment, threw a look at the two-way mirror, and set his mouth in a hard line.

“Alright. We’re done.”

\--

“You got anything new for me?”

“Laying low for now,” Freddy replied, popping his gum. It wasn’t unusual for him to wear sunglasses when they met up outdoors, but today, in Holdaway’s gut, something didn’t sit right about his hidden eyes. “Memorizin’ the plan. Going over it.”

Holdaway reviewed the notes. “Blonde and Blue in the storefront, Pink and White go for the stones. Your ass on watch duty, Brown is getaway.”

Freddy fired a pair of finger pistols at him in the affirmative.

“What you do all day yesterday?”

“Scoped out Karina’s. Familiarizing ourselves with the streets nearby an’ shit. Joe’s idea.”

“All six of you?”

He popped his gum again, making it impossible for Holdaway to make out any other facial expressions. “Nah, just me and White.”

“Any news on our friend? Mugshot matches?”

“Nothin’ yet. Still working on the mugs.”

“What the fuck is the holdup man? It’s flippin’ through a book and lookin’ at pictures!”

A shrug that was entirely too casual was the reply. “Not enough time. Spent the entire day with White.”

“Anything from the man himself, then?”

“Nothing we didn’t already figure. He’s from Wisconsin, all right. Seems familiar with LA too, but best guess is he moves around a lot.”

Holdaway hurled his notebook at Freddy’s head in response to this answer. “You spend  all that time with him and only got me this!? What were you doing the rest of the time, sucking each other’s dicks?”

Arms raised to defend himself from further projectiles, Freddy protested, “Cabot’s rules! We’re not supposed to share nothing personal.”

His handler grumpily retrieved the notebook. “Ok, what _did_ you talk about then, if not yourselves?”

“I dunno, just about the job, which I already told you. And bullshit. Songs on the radio, places to eat, Joe Cabot—but just general shit, what he’s like as a guy, how White gets along with him real good.  Nothin’ useful.”

Holdaway regarded him warily. The answer had come readily- too readily, like it’d been rehearsed. “Do I gotta pull you out?”

Freddy’s air of nonchalance didn’t change. After all, Holdaway rationalized in hindsight, it wasn’t as though he’d been plucked at random out of the force to be assigned to undercover. He chuckled. “Why the fuck would you pull me out?”

_“To do this job, you gotta be a great actor. You gotta be naturalistic. You gotta be naturalistic as hell.”_

\--

It was weird, both on a professional and a personal level, for Holdaway to be this delicate with a perp’s feelings, especially a cop killer. There was no logic, just the feeling in his gut that something had gone down between Dimick and Freddy, that instilled in him an intense aversion to revealing his dead friend’s identity to this man. The same gut feeling decreed, however, that the respect that made Holdaway not want to tell Dimick was also the reason he had to. It wouldn’t be acceptable for Dimick to hear it from anyone other than him, the closest thing Freddy had to family on the force.

His last words before shutting the door of the interrogation room behind him were: “That Mr. Orange of yours… was one of ours. Detective Freddy Newandyke.”

Holdaway chose not to look back at Dimick’s reaction. He waved off the detention officer waiting just outside. “Leave him in there to cool off while we wait for the other one’s lawyer.” Never stopping, he went directly outside for a cigarette.

\--

Once or twice before that day in the warehouse, Larry had experienced that same slowing down of time he felt with the boy in his lap and the cops at the door, usually in a moment of focus in a particularly stressful situation.

Had it just been himself, Larry may not have cared. He may have raised his guns, taken out six of them with his six remaining rounds before getting had himself. There was no way for him to know for sure now, because that wasn’t how it happened.

How it really happened, the fact of it was, it wasn’t just him. He begged with every cell for someone, anyone, to save the man in his arms.

“I love you, I love you,” he couldn’t tell if any of the sounds had actually made their way out of his mouth, but like a chant, they repeated. “I love you.”

His vision went out at that point, blurred by tears. Like being underwater dampens and distorts sound, he’d been vaguely aware of muffled sirens, yelling. And above it all, a harsh sound like metal scraping against metal, a wail coming from deep inside his own chest.

 


End file.
